This post was written by Vanessa Haight Smith, Head of Preservation Services.
The Book Conservation Lab makes use of hand-made marbled papers in some of our book treatments and projects. Originally used for decorative book covers and endsheets, marbled papers are occasionally replaced during treatments with new handmade papers when the originals are substantially damaged or missing.
We recently carved out some space in the Natural History Building for a Conservation and Digitization Annex. The Annex allows us to do low to medium level repair on site where many of our Library books are housed. Preservation staff share the space with our digitization team. The goal was to reduce the amount of shipping between our main conservation lab (located offsite in Maryland) and the majority of our materials located on the National Mall. Our main concerns were books that are very large and fragile that we are reluctant to put through the stress of packing and shipping and volumes that require simple repairs in order for them to be scanned.
This post was written by Vanessa Haight Smith, Head of Preservation Services.
Japanese paper is used for many applications in book and paper conservation and I often choose this material when reattaching weak or detached boards. The practice of toning Japanese paper hinges for reattaching boards to leather bindings, promoted by conservator Don Etherington, is widely used in the field.
It’s that back to school time of year with backpacks filled with new school supplies. If you were a student in the 1890s you may have had a new “Atlas Science more »
This post was written by Katie Boodle, Book Conservation Lab intern.
As part of the Smithsonian Libraries’ Conservation of Library Materials Internship, I had the opportunity to work on projects that addressed common conservation problems in archives and special collections: preparing works for digitization and creation of enclosures. Conservation in general is focused primarily on the stabilization of ethnographic, historical, and/or artistic objects for future or continued use. A lot of our treatment decisions, therefore, are made based on how the object will be used in the future, as well as how the objects were used in the past and the specific type of damage done to them. The main project that I worked on during my six weeks was the stabilization of a set of Trow’s New York City Business Directories dating from 1858-1867 located in the collection of Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum Library. The main purpose of repair was to prepare the volumes for digitization.
This post was written by Vanessa Haight Smith, head of Preservation Services.
This year Kathryn Boodle has been awarded the Smithsonian Libraries Professional Development Internship in Preservation. She arrived this week at the Smithsonian Libraries Preservation Department directly upon graduating from the MA program in the Conservation of Art on Paper and Books and Archival Material at the Camberwell College of Arts in London.
A set of four pop up books from the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 were recently treated in the book conservation lab. The books are part of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum Library World’s Fair materials. The World’s Columbian Exposition took place in Chicago in 1893 and these four books reveal four different views of the exposition. The four books were in good condition for pop-up books. The chromolithographic prints are still vibrant and the paper supports, while brittle, are still in good condition.